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Iowa Department of Education goals and greatest challenge

posted on September 16, 2009 at 5:28 PM

Judy Jeffrey says the goal is to help every student achieve their highest potential, but the achievement gap indicates some populations of students need to be better served. Jeffrey is the director of the Iowa Department of Education.

The
goal of the State Department of Education and the State Board of Education is
to have every student achieve to their highest potential.We want them to be ready for post-secondary
education or whatever they choose to do beyond high school, and we want every
student to have a high school diploma.

The
greatest challenge we have right now in reaching that goal is the achievement
gaps that we experience in a state that has really a very high quality
education system, but we simply are not meeting the needs of all of our
students.We have achievement gaps for
our African-American students, for our Hispanic students, for students with
disabilities and for our students who do not speak English as their first
language.And these are really the
challenges that we're facing in Iowa right now.

We
are making gains in fourth and eighth grade to begin to close that gap, but we
are not making it at eleventh grade, and to give you an example of what I mean
by the gaps that exist.At fourth grade
reading we have about a thirty percentage difference between our white students
and our African-American students and our Hispanic students.For example our students last year were
achieving at about 82% of them were declared proficient.While our African-American students about 56%
of them and our Hispanic students about 61%.

So,
that's a major gap that we have and you would see those gaps at fourth grade,
eighth grade and eleventh grade, and it's not just our children and
poverty.When I begin to pull out the
children who are living in poverty compared to those who are not we still see the
gaps between our white students and our African-American and Hispanic.Not as great, but they're still there.